To everyone who says that I have too many Classic British Sports Cars, they just didn't realize I was just preparing for this damn storm. For those who don't know, Florida got slammed with a catagory 4 hurricane on Sunday evening. All the way from Key West to the top of the state. It came through my area in Central Florida as a category 2 storm. Most of the state is without power, and fuel and it's going to be a while before it's restored. So when the generator was running low on fuel, what did I do? I went to the garage and siphoned fuel from the TD, B-GT, TR6 and TR250! Hopefully that will last until the power is back on! And yes, I know that gas cans are cheaper, but not as much fun! I hope everyone else impacted by the storm made it through safely. Here is a radar picture of the storm as it passed through. That little black dot is Mount Dora.

Following a ice/snow storm up here in October 2006 while the leaves were still on the trees and a large loss of power in the area I vowed to be protected in the future despite not being affected in that storm and being on the oldest part of the grid in the city.

In 2008 we commenced a rehab/extension which involved rewiring most of the house and upping the supply from 85A to 200A feed.

I incorporated a generator on top of the garage as power is supplied from behind my property and buried everything from the pole to the house. The generator is natural gas powered and automatically starts 10 seconds after the power goes off, usually it comes online within 5-10 seconds. It has been a great investment, probably cost $5K to add it.

It is set to automatically dump one of my circuit breaker panels if the load gets high, that panel incorporates the ovens, aircon etc. but the lights, heat and microwave are all available.

I designed the setup based on the systems I was familiar with from 40+ years in aviation.

Peter - You won't regret installing that generator. While we don't often in our area, when it does it can be out anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of days. It comes on to test with a 30 minute run (not shifting power) the propane fueled motor once a week. When we have a power outage this is the sequence - power to the house drops - count to three, hear the generator motor comes on - count to three, power comes on for the duration.
Cheers,

Yes, a whole house generator is definitely on the to-do list!
But, they'll raise the prices x2 for the next 6 months following the storm. So, it will have to wait a while.
Can't wait for hurricane season to be over!

When the power goes out in your area and the generator comes on I sure hope you guys have a transfer (isolation) switch to keep your generated electricity from going out into the distribution lines coming connected to your house. Especially after flooding. You could kill your neighbor's or linemen if you do not. So far nobody has mentioned it.

Nothing as fancy as a whole house generator. Mine is a simple 5.5KW to keep the fridge and fans going. All whole house generators require proper permits and panels to ensure that the lines aren't backfed.